Freedom of Information Act Office

IC Directors' Meeting Highlights

August 23, 2012

To:

IC Directors

Subject:

IC Directors' Meeting
Highlights — August 9, 2012

Announcements: Dr. Collins provided brief updates on a recent meeting with Drs. Holdren, Kalil, and Rubin of OSTP to discuss joint efforts with NIH. He additionally provided an update on the Stock Act and the upcoming Celebration of Science on September 7-9. Finally, he acknowledged this meeting as Dr. Shurin's final meeting participating as Acting NHLBI Director and thanked her for almost three years of service.

International AIDS Conference Overview: Anthony Fauci

Dr. Fauci gave an overview of the recent International AIDS Conference held in Washington, D.C. on July 22-27, noting the significance of this meeting being held in the U.S. for the first time in 22 years. He described a related NIH Satellite Symposium on July 22 and the full Conference opening sessions, and then discussed the slides that he presented at the Conference. Dr. Fauci highlighted recent advances in HIV science and noted the goal of ending the HIV/AIDS pandemic as an epidemiological measure that is distinct from developing an HIV cure at an individual level. He described several factors that are critical towards the goal of ending the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and noted the importance of scaling-up treatment and combination preventions in addition to the possible future use of a vaccine.

CTSA Program Update: Josie Briggs and Tom Insel

Dr. Briggs provided a handout on CTSA updates. Due to time constraints, it was decided to discuss this topic at a future meeting.

Evaluation of the Pioneer Program: Jim Anderson

Dr. Anderson described the background of the Pioneer Program from its beginning in 2004, noting that it is frequently cited as an example of successful government investment in innovation. In order to quantitatively compare the success of Pioneer awardees to control groups funded by other mechanisms, the IDA Science and Technology Policy Institute was commissioned to perform a formal analysis. Dr. Anderson described the methodology used for the comparative analysis and presented the preliminary results of the Pioneer grants versus other awardee groups. Dr. Anderson asked for feedback on the methodology and interpretation. He also introduced the possibility of a new career development award which would be more investigator-based than project-based compared to RO1 grants.

Dr. Collins expressed interest in having a more focused discussion of these topics after the IC Directors have the opportunity to review the evaluation results in more detail.